The Land-War In Ireland (1870) eBook

While O’Cahan was in prison, commissioners sat
in his mansion at Limavaddy, including the Primate
Usher, Bishop Montgomery of Derry, and Sir John Davis.
They decided that by the statute of 11 Elizabeth,
which it was supposed had been cancelled by the king’s
pardon, all his territory had been granted to the
Earl of Tyrone, and forfeited by his flight.
It was, therefore, confiscated. Although sundry
royal and viceregal proclamations had assured the
tenants that they would not be disturbed in their
possessions, on account of the offences of their chiefs,
it was now declared that all O’Cahan’s
country belonged to the crown, and that neither he
nor those who lived under him had any estate whatever
in the lands. Certain portions of the territory
were set apart for the Church, and handed over to
Bishop Montgomery. ’Of all the fair territory
which once was his, Donald Balagh had not now as much
as would afford him a last resting-place near the sculptured
tomb of Cooey-na-gall. O’Cahan got no sympathy,
and he deserved none; for he might have foreseen that
the Government to which he sold himself would cast
him off as an outworn tool, when he could no longer
subserve their wicked purposes.’[1] ’Thus
were the O’Cahans dispossessed by the colonists
of Derry, to whom their broad lands and teeming rivers
were passed, mayhap for ever. Towards the
close of the Cromwellian war in Ireland, the Duchess
of Buckingham, passing through Limavaddy, visited
its ancient castle, then sadly dilapidated, and, entering
one of the apartments, saw an aged woman wrapped in
a blanket, and crouching over a peat fire, which filled
the room with reeking smoke. After gazing at
this pitiful spectacle, the duchess asked the miserable
individual her name; when the latter, rising and drawing
herself up to her full height, replied, “I am
the wife of the O’Cahan."’[Father Meehan
dedicates his valuable work to the lord chancellor
of Ireland, the Right Hon. Thomas O’Hagan,—­the
first Catholic chancellor since the Revolution.
Descended from the O’Hagans, who were hereditary
justiciaries and secretaries to the O’Neill,
he is, by universal consent, one of the ablest and
most accomplished judges that ever adorned the Irish
Bench. His ancestors were involved in the fortunes
of Tyrone. How strange that the representative
of the judicial and literary clan of ancient Ulster
should now be the head of the Irish magistracy!]

[Footnote 1: Meehan, p.317.]

CHAPTER X.

THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER.

In the account which the lord deputy gave of the flight
of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, he referred to the mistake
that had been committed in making these men proprietary
lords of so large a territory, ’without regard
to the poor freeholders’ rights, or of his majesty’s
service, or the commonwealths, that are so much interested
in the honest liberty of that sort of men.’
And he considered it a providential circumstance that